Chapter 1: The Early Years
My parents were strict and insisted that my brother and me go to bed early when I was young, way before I was tired. So I remember using the flashlight they gave me to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night to read under the covers. It had been my secret, until the batteries quickly ran out and I had to fess up to how that had happened.
Chapter 2: My Academic [First] Career
With these early foundations for reading and learning, it’s no surprise that I chose an academic career that required vast amounts of reading and research. That, of course, was nonfiction, books and academic journal articles on topics related to my field. But it was essential that I read fiction as well. I doubt there has been a day in my life that I have not read fiction. It’s been a mainstay, essential, since childhood. Novels to begin with and then short stories once I started reading The New Yorker when I moved to upstate New York to take a job as an assistant professor of social work.
Chapter 3: Dabbling in Writing Fiction
Toward the end of my academic career, after three and a half decades of publishing mostly journal articles, I began to think I’d like to try a novel. When I started, I had no clue how to write fiction, and my writing was terrible. I had the hubris to think I could write a novel without formal instruction. The story had been simmering in my head for some time about six months before I was scheduled to retire. Then one night I just couldn’t get it out of my head, I couldn’t sleep. So at about 3 a.m., after tossing and turning for four hours, I got up and headed into my study to get the first words on paper.
My parents were strict and insisted that my brother and me go to bed early when I was young, way before I was tired. So I remember using the flashlight they gave me to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night to read under the covers. It had been my secret, until the batteries quickly ran out and I had to fess up to how that had happened.
Chapter 2: My Academic [First] Career
With these early foundations for reading and learning, it’s no surprise that I chose an academic career that required vast amounts of reading and research. That, of course, was nonfiction, books and academic journal articles on topics related to my field. But it was essential that I read fiction as well. I doubt there has been a day in my life that I have not read fiction. It’s been a mainstay, essential, since childhood. Novels to begin with and then short stories once I started reading The New Yorker when I moved to upstate New York to take a job as an assistant professor of social work.
Chapter 3: Dabbling in Writing Fiction
Toward the end of my academic career, after three and a half decades of publishing mostly journal articles, I began to think I’d like to try a novel. When I started, I had no clue how to write fiction, and my writing was terrible. I had the hubris to think I could write a novel without formal instruction. The story had been simmering in my head for some time about six months before I was scheduled to retire. Then one night I just couldn’t get it out of my head, I couldn’t sleep. So at about 3 a.m., after tossing and turning for four hours, I got up and headed into my study to get the first words on paper.
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Being a recovering alcoholic is an important dimension of my identity, and I have sponsored a variety of women over my years of recovery, service being one of the hallmarks of 12-step programs. And for a while I sponsored a woman, a chronic relapser, who had just come out of the hospital after very nearly drinking herself to death. She shared her amazing story with me, and it looked like this time she was going to get it and stay sober long term (I never found out if she did). She inspired Radical Acceptance, although it is not her story.
Chapter 4: Getting Serious
I started writing without knowing a thing about writing fiction, other than what I might have picked up indirectly by reading thousands of books and stories over the decades. It was pure hubris to think I could just start doing it without knowing anything about how to do it. At that point, I just knew I had to get the beginnings of that story out of my head and onto paper or I’d never sleep!
I quickly realized I needed to read something about how to write fiction. As I began to get words down on paper, I realized I needed to know more about how to write. Although little from my academic career was transferable to writing fiction, I did know a lot about how to learn. I knew I needed to read books on writing and find a teacher.
I started with James N. Frey’s slim volume, How to Write a Damn Good Novel, published back in 1987, in December of 2011. At less than 200 pages, it was a pretty superficial overview of how to write a novel.
It got me started, but I fumbled and began to write short stories and discovered flash fiction. I took a few helpful classes on creative writing, in person and online, and established relationships with other new writers.
I started writing without knowing a thing about writing fiction, other than what I might have picked up indirectly by reading thousands of books and stories over the decades. It was pure hubris to think I could just start doing it without knowing anything about how to do it. At that point, I just knew I had to get the beginnings of that story out of my head and onto paper or I’d never sleep!
I quickly realized I needed to read something about how to write fiction. As I began to get words down on paper, I realized I needed to know more about how to write. Although little from my academic career was transferable to writing fiction, I did know a lot about how to learn. I knew I needed to read books on writing and find a teacher.
I started with James N. Frey’s slim volume, How to Write a Damn Good Novel, published back in 1987, in December of 2011. At less than 200 pages, it was a pretty superficial overview of how to write a novel.
It got me started, but I fumbled and began to write short stories and discovered flash fiction. I took a few helpful classes on creative writing, in person and online, and established relationships with other new writers.
Early on I discovered Writer’s Digest, a fortuitous finding, because it opened the door to a vast number of resources for writers. I started to read books on how to write. The first four were:
- Description and Setting, by Ron Roselle
- Plot & Structure, by James Scott Bell
- Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint, by Nancy Kress
- Dialogue, by Gloria Kempton
As I plowed through those books, I found a course on writing offered through the Virginia G. Piper Writing Center at Arizona State University, my former employer. It was only four sessions, at night, but it introduced me to other new writers and a teacher and mentor, Marylee MacDonald. It got me moving in a more serious direction. Marylee has a great website chockfull of useful information for new writers: maryleemacdonaldauthor.com.
Chapter 5: Perfectionism vs. Persistence & Patience
I am a self-taught writer. By that I mean I haven’t taken a single college or university course on creative writing. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t had teachers such as Marylee and my critique partners. My other writing teachers are the authors of the many books I’ve read on how to write fiction like those above and those of K. M. Weiland, who has a wonderful website, www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com. Despite the fact that her fiction is not my cup of tea (e. g., fantasy, steampunk), I have found her books on plotting (Outlining Your Novel) and character development (Creating Character Arcs) to be extremely helpful.
I’ve read over and over again that what differentiates successful, published writers from those who don’t get published is not so much talent as it is persistence. And, I would add, patience. I’m getting a taste of why these days. In May of 2017, I started submitting short stories to literary magazines. Who would have imagined how many there are, especially with so many new online ones? Certainly not me. And yet, as I’ve found, getting a story published in one of those journals is very competitive, with the odds of getting published in some in the low single digits. Wow.
After receiving tons of rejections, my first story, "When You Lose the Love of Your Life," was accepted by Foliate Oak in 2017. I was beyond thrilled. All told, I have published 29 stories that vary in length from 250 words to 7600. In Submittable alone, not counting submissions by email, I've had xx rejections. If you want to become a writer, you must develop a thick skin and embrace rejection.
I've considered myself to be a recovering perfectionist ever since I first heard a graduate student employee utter that expression in the 1990s. K. M. Weiland has a recent post on perfectionism on her website that I found helpful: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/writing-perfectionism/.
Twelve-step programs consider perfectionism to be a character defect, a trait developed early on to cope with stressful aspects of life and, in my case, to gain approval from relentlessly demanding parents.
Perfectionism worked well for me for a very long time, especially in academic pursuits like test-taking and writing. And completing a Ph.D.
I've considered myself to be a recovering perfectionist ever since I first heard a graduate student employee utter that expression in the 1990s. K. M. Weiland has a recent post on perfectionism on her website that I found helpful: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/writing-perfectionism/.
Twelve-step programs consider perfectionism to be a character defect, a trait developed early on to cope with stressful aspects of life and, in my case, to gain approval from relentlessly demanding parents.
Perfectionism worked well for me for a very long time, especially in academic pursuits like test-taking and writing. And completing a Ph.D.
Until it didn’t. What did that look like? Beating myself up when I made mistakes or failed to succeed at challenging endeavors. Imposing my perfectionistic standards on other people, which made them think I was impossible to please. Just like my parents? Ouch.
Creative writing has brought out my worst perfectionistic tendencies. And yet, as any struggling writer—is there any other kind?—knows, there is no such thing as achieving perfection in writing. There will always be someone out there—agents, editors, critique partners, readers— to tell you what’s wrong with your writing. Why it isn’t perfect. It’s so hard not to take criticism of our work as a judgment of who we are as a person.
As the rejections have rolled in, I've gotten better at it, because to succeed, to survive as a writer, you have to make the transition from perfectionism to persistence and patience. Still working on it.
Creative writing has brought out my worst perfectionistic tendencies. And yet, as any struggling writer—is there any other kind?—knows, there is no such thing as achieving perfection in writing. There will always be someone out there—agents, editors, critique partners, readers— to tell you what’s wrong with your writing. Why it isn’t perfect. It’s so hard not to take criticism of our work as a judgment of who we are as a person.
As the rejections have rolled in, I've gotten better at it, because to succeed, to survive as a writer, you have to make the transition from perfectionism to persistence and patience. Still working on it.